Early "good news" on owners' approved revenue sharing plan

[The Avenger]

I may be mistaken...but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the cap floor is only being raised like 1.5 percent. Not really all that significant when you think about it. I believe ghost of Rob Johnson cited something about this in another thread....I'll look for it.

 

It's probably not even the floor that matters - it's the gap between the floor and the cap. My argument is that there will be small market teams who only spend to the floor and there will be larger market teams who spend to the cap. Throw in different approaches to accounting (cash to cap like Buffalo vs. all sorts of creative accounting/cap management tactics used by Washington) and you can have a sizeable gap between what types of players Buffalo can obtain vs. what types of players Dallas or NE can obtain. It may not be as bad as baseball where some teams' entire payrolls are what one or two star Yankee or Red Sox players make, but I see it heading that way. In my mind it won't take much for the NFL to divide between the haves and have nots when it comes to getting high dollar players.

[bbb]

Albert Breer reported that he had just spoken to the Jags' owner (Wayne Weaver?) off camera. Breer reported that the Jags owner told him that while he was very unhappy with the last revenue sharing plan (from 2006), he was "very happy" with the one that the owners just approved today.

 

If this perception is accurate and we extrapolate this news to the Bills, it could very well mean that the Bills as a business entity have the potential to remain financially strong and viable in WNY through the duration of the 10-year agreement. Good news as I see it - possibly the big news of the day for Buffalo fans.

 

If true, this is awesome news.....My fear was that the small market teams were going to get screwed in this thing.

[Doc]

Upshaw wasn't budging from 60% doc, No matter how desperately you want to rewrite history, this fact remains unchanged. Any player with a calculator will realize that D Smith gave up a ton of cash with his accepting only 48% of total revenues. There would never had been a rookie pay scale with Upshaw. There would never have been a 10 year deal.

He would have budged if the owners told him to pound sand. He and Tagliaboob had the owners wrapped around their fingers.

The actual percentage the players were getting under the Upshaw/Tag deal is 49-50%. After you slice off the top $1B of revenue going to the owners for expenses and then factor in bottom feeding owners (think Ralph Wilson) who didn't spend close to the cap the percentages for the players in this new deal (from a percentage standpoint)is basically the same. Under the current deal the players get better health and retirement benefits for the lower percentage and shyster owners like Ralph will have to increase their payrolls. The players will not be making less money.

 

The money under the rookie pay scale that the top tier draft pick lose goes directly to the veteran players. Both the players and owners are in a accord with that particular salary restructuring. It was never fair for a high first round qb draft pick to get more $$$ than Brady and Manning get.

 

 

Although you might think you know what a Upshaw deal would look like in today's world you don't. Times change and labor and financial environments' change. You make the best deal you can make from an owner/labor perspective and when the deal expires you negotiate a new deal within the context of the current times and circumstances.

Do you think it's a coincidence that most owners (not just Ralph) reigned-in their spending? Why do you think that is?

[Mark Long Beach]

It's probably not even the floor that matters - it's the gap between the floor and the cap. My argument is that there will be small market teams who only spend to the floor and there will be larger market teams who spend to the cap. Throw in different approaches to accounting (cash to cap like Buffalo vs. all sorts of creative accounting/cap management tactics used by Washington) and you can have a sizeable gap between what types of players Buffalo can obtain vs. what types of players Dallas or NE can obtain. It may not be as bad as baseball where some teams' entire payrolls are what one or two star Yankee or Red Sox players make, but I see it heading that way. In my mind it won't take much for the NFL to divide between the haves and have nots when it comes to getting high dollar players.

 

As you said the difference won't be like it is in baseball. Honestly I have no idea how people can support MLB small market teams, they have so little chance to really compete. The gap in the NFL between the big spenders and the little spenders does not look to be very large. The payroll gap looks to be less than 20% counting the accounting games played. MLB's salary range for this year is $36 mil (KCR) to $202 mil (NYY). That's ridiculous. The new NFL salary floor will now be a CASH floor per year which will probably narrow the salary spread even further.

 

With a narrow spread and weak correlation between salary & performance it looks more like the astute talent evaluators & better coaches will get better team results than the teams that "spend the most" like Washington & Dallas.

[Mr. WEO]

He would have budged if the owners told him to pound sand. He and Tagliaboob had the owners wrapped around their fingers.

 

Do you think it's a coincidence that most owners (not just Ralph) reigned-in their spending? Why do you think that is?

There is no basis for this conclusion. It's plainly ridiculous and betrays a complete lack of understanding of what actually happened.

[Doc]

There is no basis for this conclusion. It's plainly ridiculous and betrays a complete lack of understanding of what actually happened.

All you know is what transpired. You clearly don't know what happened.

[JohnC]

All you know is what transpired. You clearly don't know what happened.

 

If you know what transpired then you know what happened. At times you can be perplexing.

[Kelly the Dog]

If you know what transpired then you know what happened. At times you can be perplexing.

Not technically, and I think it's pretty easy to understand what Doc meant -- that Mr. Weo knew the end result, but did not know what happened to get that result because he wasn't there. Transpire actually means "become known". People use it more as a synonym for "to occur, or happen", but that's not really what it means.

 

Just sayin'.

Edited July 23, 2011 by Kelly the Fair and Balanced Dog

[San Jose Bills Fan]

Not technically, and I think it's pretty easy to understand what Doc meant -- that Mr. Weo knew the end result, but did not know what happened to get that result because he wasn't there. Transpire actually means "become known". People use it more as a synonym for "to occur, or happen", but that's not really what it means.

 

Just sayin'.

Yes. The outcome is different from the process.

 

Tagliabue folded. He sold the owners down the river in exchange for labor peace to cement his legacy.

 

No telling what would have happened if Tags hadn't become an invertebrate.

 

 

[Doc]

Not technically, and I think it's pretty easy to understand what Doc meant -- that Mr. Weo knew the end result, but did not know what happened to get that result because he wasn't there. Transpire actually means "become known". People use it more as a synonym for "to occur, or happen", but that's not really what it means.

 

Just sayin'.

 

Yes. The outcome is different from the process.

 

Tagliabue folded. He sold the owners down the river in exchange for labor peace to cement his legacy.

 

No telling what would have happened if Tags hadn't become an invertebrate.

Bingo and bingo. Believing that Upshaw's word was final is about the most laughable thing I've heard.

[JohnC]

Not technically, and I think it's pretty easy to understand what Doc meant -- that Mr. Weo knew the end result, but did not know what happened to get that result because he wasn't there. Transpire actually means "become known". People use it more as a synonym for "to occur, or happen", but that's not really what it means.

 

Just sayin'.

 

The owners knew exactly what they were getting with the Upshaw/Tag deal. They were very upfront that they were not satisfied with the deal. But they calculated that at that time it was better to get a deal done and not have a work stoppage. They hedged the CBA deal with a clause in the contract to have the ability to re-open it before the conclusion of the deal.

 

The owners were not hoodwinked in the original deal they signed as some are suggesting. The majority of the owners fall in the category of very strong-willed and successful businessmen. They knew when they signed the deal that they were going to re-visit the issue and make some adjustments to it.

[Kelly the Dog]

The owners knew exactly what they were getting with the Upshaw/Tag deal. They were very upfront that they were not satisfied with the deal. But they calculated that at that time it was better to get a deal done and not have a work stoppage. They hedged the CBA deal with a clause in the contract to have the ability to re-open it before the conclusion of the deal.

 

The owners were not hoodwinked in the original deal they signed as some are suggesting. The majority of the owners fall in the category of very strong-willed and successful businessmen. They knew when they signed the deal that they were going to re-visit the issue and make some adjustments to it.

I don't think the owners knew exactly what they were getting at the time, or that it was such a ****ty deal at all. I think they realized it much, much later. There is zero chance IMO they would knowingly accept a crappy deal for three full years out of a five year deal and then opt out only to have to renegotiate completely. That's ridiculous.

 

Besides, I was only referring to your post in response to Doc's, that transpire and happened are not always the same, and that it was pretty obvious what Doc was saying.

[BillsfaninFl]

Revenue sharing is a moving target. If the latest version is more fair to small market teams, then it's good news. But as stated by some of us, there are differences in the accounting systems used by teams. And just like the tax laws, there are loopholes that always seem to favor the richest people. For example, the new stadiums that were built in recent years were not necessarily much larger. Instead, they had more luxury boxes because one of the loopholes in NFL revenue sharing was that the money gained from luxury boxes was not part of the amount to be shared.

 

When Wilson changed their accounting policy to a "cash to the Cap" system, it meant that they were skewing the numbers so that it looked like they were spending more money annually than they actually were. Now people fooled by the (apparent) middle-of-the-pack Bills annual payroll (somewhere between 13th and 28th in the league, depending on which source you believe,) think that is proof that Ralph is not one of the cheapest owners in the league.

 

I sure don't know all the details of the agreements, but some things have been well publicized and are accepted as fact. There certainly is strong evidence that spending the most does not necessarily result in winning the Super Bowl. And some teams have been very good for a long time without being among the top spenders. But the failure of the Bills has been a combination of not spending enough along with not spending it wisely. Running a successful team starts with hiring top football people to run the organization and coach the players. Breaking news: That has not been the case in Buffalo for more than a decade. Then these people who demand higher pay and more independence in doing their job, bring in the right players, develop the right game plans to maximize their available talent, are able to quickly adjust to what other teams are doing well, etc.

 

Bottom Line: If the Bills are going to get a better share of the financial league pie that's good. If they are also going to be forced to spend closer to the salary cap, that's good, too. Now if the organization finally comes to the conclusion that hiring top football people and letting them do their thing is the way to go, this could be the start of something exciting. But if the team continues to be run by unqualified personnel (a castoff GM from Pittsburgh, a great coach who was just a rookie GM, a marketing guy GM no more qualified that several of us, a bunch of head coaches who were either new to the job or with a less than outstanding performance record, etc.) then the league financial policies are not enough to help the Bills be competitive.

[jwhit34]

Overall I think what's going to make the small market teams like Buffalo and Jacksonville happy is a lower cap floor number that will allow them to spend less on payroll. That may make small market team owners happy, but it has the potential to divide the league between the teams who have money and spend it (Dallas, NE) and teams who don't (Buffalo, Jax, Cle) - hard to see how we would become competitive in a system like that - just look at baseball.

 

 

While baseball has the Yankees and Red Sox at the top and the Royals and Nationals at the bottom, in the last 10 years there have been 14 different teams (maximum would be 20) in the World Series and 9 different winners (Red Sox won in '04 and '07). One could argue that there's more parity in baseball than football, though the recent history is a strong endorsement for what baseball has done lately in terms of revenue sharing and luxury tax.

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

So what is the problem as far as competition is concerned? How does having more money allow a team to spend more on players than others given the salary cap? Do we just need a harder cap?

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Under the old 2006 CBA, in years prior to 2010 (which was uncapped), all teams had the same ceiling on what they could spend on player payroll. Poor teams could choose to spend the slightly smaller floor amount. Although I don't remember the exact number, the floor was a pretty high percentsge of the ceiling for any given year.

 

It is my understanding that you are absolutely correct about the long term leveling effect of many salary cap provisions - - with the exception of the small discrepancy noted above between floor and ceiling, teams that paid big signing bonuses that resulted in spending actual cash above the cap ceiling in a given year invariably had some of that spending count against the cap ceiling in a future year.

 

One thing to keep in mind is that the salary cap has ZERO impact on what aa team spends for coaches, staff, workout facilities, etc. Its debatable just how much impact spending more for the current "hot" coach has on long term winning percentage, but I can see how it could have some impact. So wealthy teams have a slight advantage because of their non-player employees if they hire the best possible non-players.

 

I also think that a team that spends big $$ to have first class training facilities can have an impact on the team's ability to attract the best free agents. That is certsinly debatable as well, but I recall seeing interviews with Dallas Mavericks NBA players who signed with Dallas as free agents after Mark Cuban bought the team. He made a concerted effort to provide perks to the players and it really did impact the decisions of some of the free agents who signed with the team. The cost of those perks was a very small percentage of Cuban's total cost of operating the team, but word got around that Cuban treated his players well, and the talent came.

 

Those are about the only things I can think of where a wealthier team could use its $$ to create an on-the-field advantage over a poorer team under the 2006 CBA. Those advantages were small enough that poorer teams could overcome them and still win on the field.

 

Just my 2 cents.

Edited July 23, 2011 by ICanSleepWhenI'mDead

[JohnC]

I don't think the owners knew exactly what they were getting at the time, or that it was such a ****ty deal at all. I think they realized it much, much later. There is zero chance IMO they would knowingly accept a crappy deal for three full years out of a five year deal and then opt out only to have to renegotiate completely. That's ridiculous.

 

There is a historical revision that the owners got a bad deal (your discription is more graphic----****ty deal). How can a deal be so bad when the end result is that the owners made significantly more money under it than under prior deals? They made so much money that they refused to divulge their profit margins in the recent negotiations.

 

Under the old deal the net result was that the players got 49-50% of the revenue. Under the proposed new deal the players will get 47-48% of the revenue. The point that I'm making is that the Upshaw/Tag deal was not a bad deal for any faction. Were the owners dissatisfied with certain aspects of it? Of course. Just as the players and owners will be dissatisfied with some aspects of the current proposed deal.

 

Besides, I was only referring to your post in response to Doc's, that transpire and happened are not always the same, and that it was pretty obvious what Doc was saying.

 

I know what Doc was saying. And he was wrong in his interpretation of the situation. The owners absolutely knew what they were signing under the Upshaw/Tag deal. They had reservations about it when they signed the deal. That is why the opt-out clause was added. Compare that to the proposed current deal that so far doesn't have an opt-out clause. The owners made a calculation that it was better to sign an imperfect deal (from their perspective) and not jeopardize the bountiful future TV revenues with a workstoppage. Again, my point is that the owners were not hoodwinked or outhustled with the original deal. These toughminded owners and businessmen got what they knew they were getting with that deal.

[Buffalo_Stampede]

If they all agree, then it's bad for the players.

 

I dont think so, I think they have to like it because owners are required to spend more on vets. Plus they gave the players easier off-seasons and camps. Plus the player received lifetime health insurance.

Edited July 23, 2011 by TheTruthHurts

[Doc]

I know what Doc was saying. And he was wrong in his interpretation of the situation. The owners absolutely knew what they were signing under the Upshaw/Tag deal. They had reservations about it when they signed the deal. That is why the opt-out clause was added. Compare that to the proposed current deal that so far doesn't have an opt-out clause. The owners made a calculation that it was better to sign an imperfect deal (from their perspective) and not jeopardize the bountiful future TV revenues with a workstoppage. Again, my point is that the owners were not hoodwinked or outhustled with the original deal. These toughminded owners and businessmen got what they knew they were getting with that deal.

This is wrong and refuted by what the owners themselves have said. The only things you're semi-correct about is that they rushed into to "preserve labor peace" and they wisely included an opt-out clause. But even as you admitted, this caused them to accept a bad deal, from which to opt-out early. The bottom line is that it was a bad deal. Doesn't matter what excuse you give (and remember, "excuses are for losers").

[MattM]

While baseball has the Yankees and Red Sox at the top and the Royals and Nationals at the bottom, in the last 10 years there have been 14 different teams (maximum would be 20) in the World Series and 9 different winners (Red Sox won in '04 and '07). One could argue that there's more parity in baseball than football, though the recent history is a strong endorsement for what baseball has done lately in terms of revenue sharing and luxury tax.

 

I posted a NYT link a couple of weeks ago that proved the opposite point over the last 16 years at least--basically teams in the top 3 of payroll for the year in question won the WS 8 out of 16 times, while teams in the bottom half in spending won it twice in that span (and one of those was tied at 15th, as I was being generous in my counting it). If you're a Royals fan for ex. you might win it once every 240 years or so. Have fun with that....

[Kelly the Dog]

There is a historical revision that the owners got a bad deal (your discription is more graphic----****ty deal). How can a deal be so bad when the end result is that the owners made significantly more money under it than under prior deals? They made so much money that they refused to divulge their profit margins in the recent negotiations.

 

Under the old deal the net result was that the players got 49-50% of the revenue. Under the proposed new deal the players will get 47-48% of the revenue. The point that I'm making is that the Upshaw/Tag deal was not a bad deal for any faction. Were the owners dissatisfied with certain aspects of it? Of course. Just as the players and owners will be dissatisfied with some aspects of the current proposed deal.

 

 

 

I know what Doc was saying. And he was wrong in his interpretation of the situation. The owners absolutely knew what they were signing under the Upshaw/Tag deal. They had reservations about it when they signed the deal. That is why the opt-out clause was added. Compare that to the proposed current deal that so far doesn't have an opt-out clause. The owners made a calculation that it was better to sign an imperfect deal (from their perspective) and not jeopardize the bountiful future TV revenues with a workstoppage. Again, my point is that the owners were not hoodwinked or outhustled with the original deal. These toughminded owners and businessmen got what they knew they were getting with that deal.

The opt out is proof they got a bad deal. And the reason there was no way this new one was going to be easy. Both sides had opt out clauses in that last deal, the owners didn't stick it in for their advantage because they knew what they were doing. And to say they made so much money they refused to divulge their profit margins is just plain laughable. They have always refused to, as do all kinds of businesses. They didn't suddenly decide not to open their books. I got a good laugh out of that one.

 

And the new deal doesn't have an opt out clause because they know it's a much better deal, which it is. The 2% difference you mentioned is of $9,000,000,000.00! That's what, 180 million? That's a lot of cash to anyone. The players are accepting a less percentage because there is going to be more money in the pie. So they will get similar amounts in cash, but the owners will make a killing, making a bigger percentage of a bigger pie.